@Jenayah True. It's cool that when I originally said "noise" I wasn't even referring to the notification sound, but once you mentioned it I just continued the conversation under that assumption since it fit well.

First counterpoint: Was it even Voldemort that cast the curse which killed Fawkes? To my recollection, Fawkes was killed by one of the Death Eaters chasing Hagrid/Harry, and it was only after Fawkes was recognized by them that Voldemort knew which 'Harry' was actually Harry, and came to him.
Se...

As opposed to the below answer by the same user, which might be correct but doesn't address the question:

Even if they are bound to obey the students, in this specific case, I would argue that the 'or something' part of the command acts as a sort of 'escape clause', allowing the elf to do something other that immediately go to sleep [and I imagine it would simply continue on with its normal chores at...

He was speaking figuratively.
Obviously he didn't plan to keep his sword actually unsheathed, for reasons of safety on several different levels, for the many days it would obviously take until he reached the last battle.
I've wondered about this exact same thing (hey, I'm a pedant too!) and sat...

@Alex I'd qualify that one as a not an answer, since both it's wrongness and what it points out to ("your argument is invalid because that was Malfoy's wand"... Yeah, but we're talking about the times he was using his own) make it a non-answer in my eyes

As for the other, I commented, won't copy-paste here, I'm lazy :)

Basically what's ok in fanfiction might not be ok in Canon (surprise surprise)

TheLethalCarrot had immediately rejected the proposal as absurd given the two are in no way identical. Did you seem my follow-up comments there? (And not to be pedantic, but my comment there got one upvote so perhaps one other person thought that it logically follows?) — AlexJul 17 at 6:01

@Jenayah It would be a good answer if it successfully showed that the premise of the question was mistaken. Since it is actually the answerer who was mistaken, it's a bad answer, but an answer nonetheless.

In my opinion.

@Alex That post's gotta be some kind of record. 27 downvotes and no upvotes!

@Alex But if the question had been clearer, then it might not be an answer because then it would be clearly addressing something other than what the question asked.

@Jenayah I did reject it, but on its own merits. I rejected it because I disagreed with the premise. But the point of the post was that if you do accept the premise then you should accept the suggestion, or go back and reject the premise.

@Jenayah (again this is my opinion, not necessarily policy) I would say that it's not such a harm to the quality if it's at the bottom of the page with a bunch of downvotes. The method to decide would be are they actually attempts to address the question.

@Randal'Thor of course! but the premise would be the same, something as "for future readers, this is considered a 'bad' answer because XYZ"

Example for what I was saying: the one below is not wrong (it's an answer to the question, whether the order at stake is relevant or not, I don't know), but it's got several downvotes without explanation. You could add something like "FYI future readers, this is considered bad because 1/awful formatting 2/no explanation as to why it's this order"

My two cents:
The Gunslinger
Everything's Eventual (For the purpose of Dark Tower, only read "Little Sisters of Eluria")
The Drawing of the Three
Eyes of the Dragon
The Stand
The Wastelands
The Talisman
Wizard and Glass
The Wind Through the Keyhole
Salem's Lot
Wolves of the Calla
Black House
Song...

Well, this very example is a bit wrong in the sense that there's a Is this based on anything other than your own opinion? comment on a similar answer right above, but that's not always the case.

On the other hand, I can hear some users growling at those proposed comments adding noise and visual blight to the site, which is not entirely wrong.

The plot is (I believe) that a boy is on vacation with his parents in Egypt. The book is set around the time of the flooding of the Aswan Dam.
The boy meets this other kid (while scuba diving?) and they become friends. The story emerges that he is actually descended from survivors of Atlantis. T...

In Harry Potter for Kinect Year 1, I get why it had Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore because Richard Harris had passed away, but why in the world is the young Flitwick there? It should be the older Flitwick.

Though wiki says the videogame came out in ~2007 so I think the answer is along the lines of "people were used to Flitwick's appearance in the latest movies, so we kept that one and did not model the character basing ourselves on the first movie"

Note: please do not edit the title! It originates in a challenge in Stack Overflow chat.
I have rounded up all ten (currently) of the Puzzling SE users named Kevin and trapped them in my labyrinth. The only way out is across a narrow bridge which can bear the weight of at most two Kevins at a ti...

@Jenayah There are actually a few users there who only get involved in Meta, editing, voting, and other "non-content" ways. Some ask an occasional question or give an answer when there's something external involved which they might know more about than "experts on Judaism".

@Alex FWIW, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing "non-content" activity on a site where I don't understand 30-40% of the words being used, even if it's to fix English grammar errors on the ones I do understand

@Alex I'm not sure I understand. Does that mean every question there is on Mi Yodeya is supposed to be understandable by someone who "only" knows English, and not the Jewish "technical" terms which might very well be relevant to the situation?

@Jenayah Ideally, yes. Sometimes it's simply impossible, as there just might not be English equivalents, but to whatever extent possible we encourage regular language (and linking to explanations of terms in the impossible cases).

Don't get me wrong, said terms are part of the English language, but if I open a random Mi Yodeya question I think most of the hillbillies out there wouldn't understand anything else that the "thanks! :) " at the bottom

How are we to understand the tradition that the patriarchs kept all of the mitzvot in the Torah (see for example the last mishna in Kidushin, Rashi Bereshit 32:5, etc.) in light of the many obvious logical contradictions that this would seem to imply?
For examples of such logical contradictions ...

> How are we to understand the tradition that the patriarchs kept all of the mitzvot in the Torah (see for example the last mishna in Kidushin, Rashi Bereshit 32:5, etc.) in light of the many obvious logical contradictions that this would seem to imply?

@Jenayah So ideally, the title could have been written as "Patriarchs keeping the Commandments". But we assume that someone who would know the answer to that question would by definition know that "avot" means "patriarchs" and "mitzvot" means commandments. That doesn't really help for someone else reading the question, but we might also assume that someone who doesn't know "avot" and "mitzvot" wouldn't be interested in the question. All in all, it's an imperfect system, but we try (sometimes)

@Jenayah For example, one of the answers there says: This question was discussed by the Meforshim (traditional commentators)

The answerer used a "term" but explained it in parentheses.

@Randal'Thor That's part of a series that is debatable whether they are real questions. In any case, the question could still have been explained, like in this other one from the series which explains:

The traditional Passover song "Echad - mi yodeya" implies a possible presupposition that there is a Jewish significance to be found for each natural number. Accordingly, there is an ongoing series on Mi Yodeya that is attempting to unearth significant Judaism facts about each number, in sequence.

@Alex ok, so it's kind of a funnel thing? Explicit title, "understandable" first paragraph, and the further you go, the more "ok" it is to use "technical" words? (as long as you keep defining them briefly, that is)

@Jenayah That might be how it works out in practice sometimes. I think it's really that most people who are used to using certain phrases as part of regular conversation in their daily lives, find it burdensome to use only "general terminology".

Sometimes other users leave comments asking the poster to edit, or they edit out the jargon themselves.

Like this comment from today:

Welcome to Mi Yodeya! Please take a moment to look over our tour where you’ll find useful information about our site. I’ve gone ahead and helped you out with the tags and replaced the more yeshivish terminology you used with wording that’s easier for the layman to understand. If you don’t like any of these changes or want to change more, please feel more than welcome to edit it yourself. Thank you for your insightful question and I hope to see you around! — DonielF16 hours ago

Ironic that even the dejargoning comment used jargon to refer to what he was dejargoning.

@Adamant I wasn't complaining about it. I'm not Jewish and would be unlikely to use that site anyway. It's just noteworthy that (from my limited observations) there's so much jargon used in posts there.